Things hotting up with Turkey

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LE

We were bankrupt, Its a fact we borrowed enormous sums from America and others well over 57 Billion, much of it went into our military look at a spike chart at our military spending then, it wasn't the then british taxpayers money..our country has lived in this ridiculous bubble of "winning the war" and it was never challenged....hence people like you are so naive about it.

The funding for the British atomic programme was skimmed off the single service estimates in 1947, which were not funded through the Marshall Plan. Moreover the McMahon act meant that the US would have been watching how the money was spent because they would not support a British independent nuclear programme. The funding for the program wasn't discovered until Churchill returned to office in 1951 and found out how the money had been hidden -100 million pounds.

It wasn't until 1957 with the defence white paper that Britain seriously looked at restructuring its forces. This review showed that 7% of the adult male population was in uniform and there were 150000 servicemen outside of the UK and Europe. Duncan Sandys realised that this was having a huge economic impact on the United Kingdom, not only the cost of keeping these people in uniform but the loss of these people to industry.

Not due operational until at least April. It takes time to train your operators and technicians, and I suspect that in present circumstances, the Russian support staff might be on a bit of a 'go slow'.

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
“Nobody's slave, nobody's tyrant” - Generallöjtnant Jakob Albrekt von Lantingshausen
"Only the dead have seen the end of war" - Plato

Thousands of migrants in Turkey faced off with the riot police at the Greek border, and the Turkish leader lashed out at the E.U., saying it had not helped him manage a growing crisis in northern Syria.

www.nytimes.com

The EU’s open border policy and free movement for all is about to get tested, while funds from UK about to be cut off.

Islam is on the move. Interesting times.

Turkey has an interesting history on agreements, they don’t seem to last long. At some stage the EU and NATO will either have to continue to effectively be blackmailed by Erdogan or find some way of putting a stop to his threats.

He tried with the US and lost his F-35’s, bought S-400’s and cosied up to Putin, and that doesn’t seem to have bought him much time. Perhaps the EU and NATO should try a bit of tough love and stop pandering to him, because playing nice doesn’t seem to be working.

LE

This could be a game changer, with Russian ground troops being put in harm's way in a town that reportedly was only recaptured by the Syrian Army today.

'Russian military police have been deployed to Saraqeb in Syria’s Idlib province, the Defense Ministry has confirmed. Until recently, the strategic town has seen heavy fighting between Syrian forces and Turkish-backed militants.

'The police presence is especially important because of the key role that Saraqeb plays in assuring the safety of vehicles and the civilian population travelling along the M4 and M5 highways. The M4 connects the major port of Latakia to the Syrian-Iraqi border, while the M5 links Aleppo with Syrian capital Damascus and goes all the way to Jordan. Saraqeb is located near both of these transportation corridors.

'There was heavy fighting between Syrian government forces and militants over the town in recent weeks. In late February, the jihadists even announced that they were able to gain control of the town, but a source within the Russian military told Interfax back then that all of the attacks on the town were repelled.'

Russian military police have been deployed to Saraqeb in Syria’s Idlib province, the Defense Ministry has confirmed. Until recently, the strategic town has seen heavy fighting between Syrian forces and Turkish-backed militants.

www.rt.com

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
“Nobody's slave, nobody's tyrant” - Generallöjtnant Jakob Albrekt von Lantingshausen
"Only the dead have seen the end of war" - Plato

LE

This could be a game changer, with Russian ground troops being put in harm's way in a town that reportedly was only recaptured by the Syrian Army today.

'Russian military police have been deployed to Saraqeb in Syria’s Idlib province, the Defense Ministry has confirmed. Until recently, the strategic town has seen heavy fighting between Syrian forces and Turkish-backed militants.

'The police presence is especially important because of the key role that Saraqeb plays in assuring the safety of vehicles and the civilian population travelling along the M4 and M5 highways. The M4 connects the major port of Latakia to the Syrian-Iraqi border, while the M5 links Aleppo with Syrian capital Damascus and goes all the way to Jordan. Saraqeb is located near both of these transportation corridors.

'There was heavy fighting between Syrian government forces and militants over the town in recent weeks. In late February, the jihadists even announced that they were able to gain control of the town, but a source within the Russian military told Interfax back then that all of the attacks on the town were repelled.'

Russian military police have been deployed to Saraqeb in Syria’s Idlib province, the Defense Ministry has confirmed. Until recently, the strategic town has seen heavy fighting between Syrian forces and Turkish-backed militants.

I think this time around, an inevitable development. I suspect that the original Russian intent was to secure both the M5 and M4, but given the ferocity of the Turkish backlash, they have probably decided to secure the regime's gains and allow Asad's army to draw breath and replenish losses...

LE

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
“Nobody's slave, nobody's tyrant” - Generallöjtnant Jakob Albrekt von Lantingshausen
"Only the dead have seen the end of war" - Plato

LE

Most are simply displaced poor fleeing for their lives, and amongst them, terrorists, economic migrants looking for better conditions along with the criminals, thugs and detritus of society that simply floats with the crowd.

Circumstance, the character of the nations they come from, comes with them, not a completely palatable mix, and Turkey to a reasonably large degree responsible for at least some of the recent stirring and bubbling over in the direction of Europe.

Turkey should be facing some serious questions from both the EU and Nato rather that platitudes and more money, along with those in the EU, who are handling this issue.At the moment they appear to be floundering.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has criticized Turkey's actions at the Greek border, saying that it was "wholly unacceptable" for Recep Tayyip Erdogan to punish migrants because of his dissatisfaction with Europe.

www.dw.com

Simply telling Erdogan what he is doing is unacceptable will have little effect.

Mix this with coronavirus and it ceases to be ‘interesting’ and becomes downright frightening!!

LE

The only regular troops the Russia has sent to Syria were teams of MPs as observers. However thousands of Russian mercenaries were/are operating there employed by Wagner. About a year ago about 150 got the good news when they tried to attack a US base at Dar A Zor.

On ROPS

Amazing how Turkey appears to have walked into two wars,...it seems Vlad is preparing to actually fight them,...he is not going to watch the turks take out Assad after all Russia's efforts in the last few years...the Turks are stuffed..also interesting is the turk body count so far...its pretty horrific even if it is the truth..and it seems its not. Erdogans wars is going to be the end of him.

The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.
George Orwell.

LE

Not due operational until at least April. It takes time to train your operators and technicians, and I suspect that in present circumstances, the Russian support staff might be on a bit of a 'go slow'.

LE

Seems Turkey must be reasonably happy with the service they've got to date.

'Turkey could finalise terms for delivery of a second consignment of S-400 advanced missile defences from Russia by April 2020 when the first batch will be ready to operate.

'The news about the Russian-Turkish talks on the purchase of S-400 systems first came in November 2016. The Russian side confirmed that the contract had been signed on September 12, 2017. Concurrently, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Ankara had made an advance payment. Turkey is the first NATO member state purchased an air defense weapon of this class from Russia. The first shipment of a Russian missile defense system has arrived in Turkey on July 12, 2019.'

The United States is seriously worried about the situation related to the purchase by Turkey of Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems, learned BulgarianMilitary.com.

bulgarianmilitary.com

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
“Nobody's slave, nobody's tyrant” - Generallöjtnant Jakob Albrekt von Lantingshausen
"Only the dead have seen the end of war" - Plato

LE

The question no-one asks is why are they heading to Europe and the West? Why not to other Muslim countries?

Soft touch? Better human rights? Social care? Tolerance? Less violence? Better living conditions? Perhaps those are the main concerns of the refugees themselves, but there is a bigger picture.

Problem is... they bring with them the culture, beliefs, habits, and behaviours that are causing them to leave their own countries.

Unfortunately front line Greece is now getting tough (pretty much having to), with the unfortunate pawns in the Muslim power struggles in the Middle East, who are threatening to pour in, funnelled and aided by Turkey. The country who, through their own human rights record were refused membership of the EU.

But then 80 million in one go always was going to be a big ask, that even the most huggy feely EU bureaucrats could see could backfire spectacularly. And Turkey’s present behaviour is simply reinforcing that.

At the moment everyone appears to expect the West to sort out what seems to be a mainly Muslim problem, and to take in all these people, but, it has already begun to destroy the social fabric of those countries whose open door policies were the most generous.

The EU and some of their ‘enlightened’ policies have unfortunately created a situation that is spiralling more and more out of control. They have and are creating money pits that will continue to attract more and more economic migrants.

European countries are already host to significant immigrant or immigrant-origin populations, these opening new channels for migration as families, neighbors, friends and relatives all follow. Apparent failure to integrate has been to an extent cultural when grouped together rather than adapt to European culture, adopt European norms, values and styles it has been easier to remain Muslim and follow their faith which has led to problems with their hosts.

The problem is now magnifying with Turkeys actions in Syria and its decision to simply point the flow of refugees in Europes direction. Tight border controls are the antithesis of Europe's declared 'Crown Jewel’ free movement, but Europe may just have to start instituting some tighter controls or be swamped.

LE

The survival of the Erdogan government requires periodic activation of coup rhetoric.

www.al-monitor.com

Basically, there have been rumours of a coup in Turkey going back since 2017 (the attempted coup was in July 2016). Strangely, some of these seem to emanate from the ruling party (AKP) under Erdogan to help bind the country together in the face of poor economic performance.

But there has been reported discontent amongst middle ranked officers about Turkish policy towards Syria and Russia. However, I have difficulty in believing this as it would be a very brave and extremely foolish person who would ever articulate such thoughts openly or in private conversations. Nonetheless, Coups have been a part of Modern Turkey (1961, 1970, 1980, 1997, 2016...) and the Army is still held in high respect by the population. The TuAF is delivering good news to both ground and air units of the Syrian Army in response to the 33 soldiers killed last week. Turkey doesn't want to save the population of Idlib (FTFs and hard-line Jihadists) and certainly are not willingly taking them in as refugees, which is mhy the Turkish Army had observation posts there.

IOM list Turkey as home to just under 4 m registered refugees; probably the real number is over 5 million - out of a population of c 80 million. Much of the care of refugees has been funded by Turkey itself as EU funding has bee slow in materialising, and Islamic filial support for them has dwindled. Imagine if the UK or Germany had about 4 million refugees in camps or on the streets - we'd want them to move on as well.

Sadly, I'm a few years out of date with Turkey as I used to cover policy aspects a few years ago in a previous job so just relying on media reports these days and its been three years since I was last there.

LE

The survival of the Erdogan government requires periodic activation of coup rhetoric.

www.al-monitor.com

Basically, there have been rumours of a coup in Turkey going back since 2017 (the attempted coup was in July 2016). Strangely, some of these seem to emanate from the ruling party (AKP) under Erdogan to help bind the country together in the face of poor economic performance.

But there has been reported discontent amongst middle ranked officers about Turkish policy towards Syria and Russia. However, I have difficulty in believing this as it would be a very brave and extremely foolish person who would ever articulate such thoughts openly or in private conversations. Nonetheless, Coups have been a part of Modern Turkey (1961, 1970, 1980, 1997, 2016...) and the Army is still held in high respect by the population. The TuAF is delivering good news to both ground and air units of the Syrian Army in response to the 33 soldiers killed last week. Turkey doesn't want to save the population of Idlib (FTFs and hard-line Jihadists) and certainly are not willingly taking them in as refugees, which is mhy the Turkish Army had observation posts there.

IOM list Turkey as home to just under 4 m registered refugees; probably the real number is over 5 million - out of a population of c 80 million. Much of the care of refugees has been funded by Turkey itself as EU funding has bee slow in materialising, and Islamic filial support for them has dwindled. Imagine if the UK or Germany had about 4 million refugees in camps or on the streets - we'd want them to move on as well.

Sadly, I'm a few years out of date with Turkey as I used to cover policy aspects a few years ago in a previous job so just relying on media reports these days and its been three years since I was last there.

There are also loads of Afghans, Pakistanis, Iraqis, Yemenis, and others in Turkey who call themselves "Syrian refugees" as cover, all wanting to get to the EU for a brighter future. Of course many of them are also genuine refugees, but they're the "wrong sort" of refugees who don't fit our foreign policy agenda, so we'll ignore those. Many of them though are simply economic migrants.

As you said, many of the actual Syrian refugees don't live in refugee camps and aren't registered with the UN as "official" refugees. Thus there is plenty of scope for very large numbers of people from other countries to live among them claiming to be "Syrian". As I previously mentioned, Canada had to screen each of the prospective refugees individually when taking in Syrian refugees recently in order to separate the Syrians from the non-Syrians.

A lot of these unregistered people, both Syrians and non-Syrians, currently work in Turkey. Some of them have work permits, but many work in the underground economy.

Overall it's a huge problem for the Turks. The "obvious" solution would be for the war to end and to ship all the Syrians back home, willingly or unwillingly.

That leaves the problem though of what to do with the non-Syrians who are claiming to be Syrian refugees. I can imagine that in any sort of peaceful resolution of the problem Damascus are going to want to ID everyone who crosses in from Turkey, in order to separate out the jihadis for special treatment. The Afghans, Pakistanis, and Yemenis in particular are going to stick out like a sore thumb then, leaving aside the fact that they have no desire to go to Syria anyway.

I'm not sure what the Turks are going to want to do about that. Ideally from their perspective they could just round them all up and hurl them over the border with a trebuchet, but that might be difficult to put into practice.

If and when that day comes though, that could be another crisis point in events in the region, both for Turkey and the EU.

LE

There are also loads of Afghans, Pakistanis, Iraqis, Yemenis, and others in Turkey who call themselves "Syrian refugees" as cover, all wanting to get to the EU for a brighter future. Of course many of them are also genuine refugees, but they're the "wrong sort" of refugees who don't fit our foreign policy agenda, so we'll ignore those. Many of them though are simply economic migrants.

As you said, many of the actual Syrian refugees don't live in refugee camps and aren't registered with the UN as "official" refugees. Thus there is plenty of scope for very large numbers of people from other countries to live among them claiming to be "Syrian". As I previously mentioned, Canada had to screen each of the prospective refugees individually when taking in Syrian refugees recently in order to separate the Syrians from the non-Syrians.

A lot of these unregistered people, both Syrians and non-Syrians, currently work in Turkey. Some of them have work permits, but many work in the underground economy.

Overall it's a huge problem for the Turks. The "obvious" solution would be for the war to end and to ship all the Syrians back home, willingly or unwillingly.

That leaves the problem though of what to do with the non-Syrians who are claiming to be Syrian refugees. I can imagine that in any sort of peaceful resolution of the problem Damascus are going to want to ID everyone who crosses in from Turkey, in order to separate out the jihadis for special treatment. The Afghans, Pakistanis, and Yemenis in particular are going to stick out like a sore thumb then, leaving aside the fact that they have no desire to go to Syria anyway.

I'm not sure what the Turks are going to want to do about that. Ideally from their perspective they could just round them all up and hurl them over the border with a trebuchet, but that might be difficult to put into practice.

If and when that day comes though, that could be another crisis point in events in the region, both for Turkey and the EU.

A great post, which doesn't demonize the Turks. The Turks have been extraordinarily generous looking after the refugees and looking after them pretty well. But with a flagging economy and general suspicion of foreigners Turkey has had enough. As I mentioned in my post, the EU has been rather slow in providing the promised funds and also taking refugees for settlement.

ADC

Russia is racing to reinforce its troops in Syria by sea and air before talks between the Russian and Turkish leaders in Moscow on Thursday, flight data and shipping movements show.

www.reuters.com

Russia appears to be ‘beefing up’ their forces in Syria. Usually one or two warships a week pass through the Bosphorous. This week, five warships in six days, the most since October when the US pulled out of NE Syria and Russia went in and took control of the the vacuum left:

But Russia appears to be reinforcing Syria at its fastest rate since October, when U.S. forces withdrew from some parts of Syria and Moscow scrambled to fill the vacuum.

Reuters’ monitoring of the Bosphorus since Feb. 28 shows Russia has sent five warships toward Syria within six days. That exceeds a usual pattern of one or two warships ships per week.

LE

Just seen some footage from at or near the Turkish/Greek border, jeez, all these people with basically nothing to do all day, yet the camp they live in is an absolute shitheap. Can’t they keep the place clean and tidy?
I mean, they doing fùck all else!